IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL ROBOTICS AND BIONICS, VOL. 3, NO.

1, FEBRUARY 2021 289

Design of a Low-Cost Miniature Robot to Assist the

COVID-19 Nasopharyngeal Swab Sampling
Shuangyi Wang , Kehao Wang , Ruijie Tang, Jingzhe Qiao,
Hongbin Liu , Member, IEEE, and Zeng-Guang Hou , Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—Nasopharyngeal (NP) swab sampling is an effective approach

for the diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Medical staffs
carrying out the task of collecting NP specimens are in close contact
with the suspected patient, thereby posing a high risk of cross-infection.
We propose a low-cost miniature robot that can be easily assembled and
remotely controlled. The system includes an active end-effector, a passive
positioning arm, and a detachable swab gripper with integrated force
sensing capability. The cost of the materials for building this robot is
55 USD and the total weight of the functional part is 0.23kg. The design
of the force sensing swab gripper was justified using Finite Element (FE)
modeling and the performances of the robot were validated with a sim-
ulation phantom and three pig noses. FE analysis indicated a 0.5mm
magnitude displacement of the gripper’s sensing beam, which meets the
ideal detecting range of the optoelectronic sensor. Studies on both the
phantom and the pig nose demonstrated the successful operation of the
robot during the collection task. The average forces were found to be
0.35N and 0.68N, respectively. It is concluded that the proposed robot is
promising and could be further developed to be used in vivo.
Index Terms—COVID-19 diagnostic robot, nasopharyngeal swab robot,
robot to combat COVID-19, interventional robot.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The global outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP)
caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly.
Collection of specimens from the surface of the respiratory
mucosa with nasopharyngeal (NP) or Oropharyngeal (OP) swabs are
treated as effective ways for the diagnosis and screening [1]. Several
recent studies have indicated that OP swabs are less effective than
NP swabs in detecting the COVID-19 virus [2], [3] and concluded
that the use of NP may be more suitable, although a study also high-
lighted the data should be viewed with cautions [4]. According to US
CDC, both NP and OP should be performed by a healthcare profes-
sional. Other possible approaches, e.g., nasal mid-turbinate (NMT)
Manuscript received August 19, 2020; revised October 10, 2020; accepted
November 3, 2020. Date of publication November 6, 2020; date of current
version February 22, 2021. This article was recommended for publica-
tion by Associate Editor K. Harada and Editor P. Dario upon evaluation
of the reviewers’ comments. This work was supported in part by the
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and in part by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62003339 and
Grant 82000878. (Shuangyi Wang and Kehao Wang are co-first authors.)
(Corresponding author: Shuangyi Wang.)
Shuangyi Wang, Ruijie Tang, and Zeng-Guang Hou are with the State Key
Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of
Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China (e-mail:
shuangyi.wang@ia.ac.cn; ruijie.tang@ia.ac.cn; zengguang.hou@ia.ac.cn).
Kehao Wang is with the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center
for Biomedical Engineering, Key Laboratory for Biomechanics and
Mechanobiology of Ministry of Education, School of Biological Science and
Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China (e-mail:
kehaowang@buaa.edu.cn).
Jingzhe Qiao is with the School of Mechanical Engineering and
Automation, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China (e-mail:
qiaojz@yeah.net).
Hongbin Liu is with the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging
Sciences, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS, U.K. (e-mail:
hongbin.liu@kcl.ac.uk).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMRB.2020.3036461

c IEEE 2020. This article is free to access and download, along with rights for full text and data mining, re-use and analysis.
Fig. 1. Diagram showing the nasopharyngeal (NP) swab collection procedure.
swab (also known as deep nasal swab) and anterior nares (nasal
swab) specimen, could be supervised onsite self-collection and home
self-collection [5]. During the conventional manually controlled swab
sampling, medical staffs are inevitably in close contact with the sus-
pected patient, posing a high risk of cross-infection. The operating
skills and psychological states of medical workers may also affect
the accuracy and quality of the results of swab collection.
As the global fight against COVID-19 may last for a long period of
time with tens of thousands nasal swab samplings performed world-
wide each day, robotic-assisted NP and OP swabbing with remote
operation capability may reduce the risk of infection and at the mean
time free up staffs for other tasks. Comparing with human, the robot
can be more thoroughly disinfected and those parts that are in close
contact with patients can be disassembled and replaced. The value of
using robots in fighting against COVID-19 has been highlighted in [6]
and a well-designed robot for OP collection was recently developed
by the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health and the Shenyang
Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences [7].
The robot consists of a snaking-shape robot arm for motion control
and a binocular endoscope for visualization. The system has been
successfully tested in vivo and proved effective in clinical trials.
In the present study, we aim to develop a low-cost, easy-to-assemble
robot with small footprint to assist NP swab collections. The NP swab
collection involves inserting a specifically manufactured swab into
the patient’s nasal cavity [8]. The head of the patient is expected to
be tilted back (at approximate 70◦ ) so the nasal passage becomes
straight and accessible. As illustrated in Figure 1, the swab is inserted
through the nostril parallel to the palate, and to the nasopharynx
until resistance forces are identified. The swab is then left in place
for several seconds for secretion absorptions and been rotationally
retracted from the nasal cavity slowly. In this article, we aim to present
the design concept, the implementation method, the simulation study,
and the preliminary phantom and animal tests of the robot.
II. D ESIGN AND I MPLEMENTATION OF THE ROBOT
A. Design Concepts
The proposed robot includes an active 2-degree of freedom (DOF)
end-effector (Figure 2) for actuating the swab and a generic 6-DOF
passive arm for the global positioning. Within the supporting case,

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290 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL ROBOTICS AND BIONICS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2021
Fig. 2. Schematic illustration of the proposed 2-DOF active end-effector
with each component and the mechanism of the force sensing swab gripper
shown.
Fig. 3. Movements of the proposed 2-DOF robotic end-effector during the
procedure of NP swab collection.
a leadscrew driven linear stage actuated by a stepper motor was
mounted. A geared stepper motor is attached to the front end of
the linear stage to control the following rotation link. As illustrated
in Figure 2, a specially designed swab gripper is attached to the rota-
tion link with its extruded structure tightly fitted into the grove of the
rotation link. The swab can be assembled to the swab gripper with
its shaft constrained by the constraint hole and held by the gripping
cylinder of the swab gripper.
The proposed individual structures allow easy attaching and
detaching operations between the swab and the swab gripper that
can be performed by either the patient or the on-site health
professional, making the collection conveniently and both compo-
nents recyclable. The overall size of the 2-DOF end-effector is
150(L) × 60(W) × 40(D) mm. The movements of the 2-DOF robotic
end-effector is shown in Figure 3 with the motions of the prismatic
and the rotation joints demonstrated.
The structure of the swab gripper was designed to also work as
a single-axis force sensor based on the principle of compliant mecha-
nism (CM). The compression force experienced by the swab when it
is in contact with the nasal cavity would result in the largest vertical
displacement segment of the structure at the center of the deflection
beam. As shown in Figure 2, the displacement is detected by an opto-
electronic sensor (QRE1113, Fairchild Semiconductor, California, the
United States) which consists of a LED to generate infrared (IR) light
and a photo-transistor to receive the reflected light. The measurement
circuit is embedded into a breakout board (SparkFun Electronics,
Colorado, the United States) to detect the output voltage, which varies
depending on the amount of IR light reflected to the sensor with
changes of the distance between the sensor and the deflection beam.
Two parts of the characteristic curve (as illustrated in Figure 2) show
linear relationships between the measured distance and the output
current. To guarantee a high linearity and sensitivity, the yellow
area (measured distance in between 0 to 0.50 mm) in Figure 2 was
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Fig. 4. Implementation of the proposed robot with its passive arm, active
end-effector, add-on headrest, and the embedded electronics shown. The photo
was taken only for illustrational purpose to show the expected clinical setup
of the NP swab collection procedure.
used in this study. The selected sensor has been proved in our previous
studies to be able to achieve large output voltage variations without
using an amplifier and demonstrates low level of noises [9], [10]. The
overall size of the swab gripper is 38(L) × 33(W) × 5(D) mm.
B. Hardware and Software Implementation
In this research, we employed a 6-DOF passive arm for global posi-
tioning and insertion angle adjustments. The passive arm has a global
revolute joint (R1), two parallel mechanisms to adjust backwards-
forwards and up-down movements (R2 and R3), and a tilting joint
(R4) working together with a ball joint (R5 & R6) to fine-tune
the angulation of the end-effector, i.e., the insertion angle of the
swab. The setup of the 6-DOF passive arm and the 2-DOF active
end-effector is shown in Figure 4.
The setup is to demonstrate the expected clinical scenery for the NP
swab collection procedure when using the robot. The passive arm is
clamped to the table with the active end-effector attached. An inertial
measurement unit (IMU, DT-06, Shenzhen Doctors of Intelligence &
Technology Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, China) could be embedded into the
end-effector to measure the tilting angle. The add-on headrest has
a tilting joint that can be manually adjusted. The combined used
of the headrest and the IMU sensor would help to align the angle
of the patient’s head and the initial insertion angle of the robot, at
approximate 70◦ .
Additionally, a microcontroller (MCU) WeMos D1 mini with
its power shield (core chip based on ESP8266, Espressif Systems,
Shanghai, China) and two stepper motor drivers (DRV8825, Texas
Instruments, Dallas, US) were utilized in the design. The electron-
ics setup is shown in Figure 4. The whole system is powered by
a regular 9V-3A power supply which can be directly plug into the
power shield. With the WiFi function of the MCU, we developed
a mobile phone-based simple user interface (UI) using the Blynk
software (Blynk ver. 2.27.17, Android app) to remotely control the
stepper motors and display the sensor’s reading. Joysticks, buttons,
and level displays were included into the UI with their functions
illustrated in Figure 5. Specifically, with the 2-axis joystick actuated
diagonally, the swab can be translated and rotated simultaneously, in
both directions of each axis to meet the clinical needs as explained
in Figure 1.
The proposed active end-effector was mainly made from 3D print-
ing using Polylactic (PLA) acid and the swab gripper was 3D printed
using Polypropylene (PP) material. PLA is the widely used rigid
printing material while PP is a semi-rigid flexible material with excel-
lent fatigue resistance. The manufacturing cost of the system is listed
in the Table I, with a total cost price of 400 RMB (∼55 USD).
C. Safety Features
1) Motor Current Limiting and the Maximum Payload: The
DRV8825 stepper motor driver used in this study provides an active
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL ROBOTICS AND BIONICS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2021
Fig. 5. Screenshot of the robot control software developed in Blynk.
TABLE I
C OST P RICE S UMMARY OF THE P ROPOSED ROBOT
Fig. 6. (a) Setup for the current-force measurement experiment and the test
results; (b) manually controlled tool for the maximum force measurements.
current limiting method: each full-bridge is controlled by a fixed
off-time PWM current control circuit that limits the load current
to a desired value. The maximum value of current limiting can be
adjusted by setting the reference pin and the motor’s maximum torque
is proportional to ampere-turns. This feature limits the maximum
allowable force when the swab is in contact with the patient. Test
results shown in Figure 6(a) were obtained by adjusting the current
limiting setting from 0.2A to the maximum allowable value, 2.2A,
of the stepper motor driver in the linear axis and measuring the cor-
responding maximum forces generated by the linear stage before
the stepper motor slips using a commercial force sensor (JHBM-
H3, JNSensor, Anhui, China). A regular daily-used shorter swab
with wooden shaft was employed to avoid the buckling effects.
The experimental setup is shown in Figure 6(a). To decide the
value of the maximum current setting, a separate swab holder was
designed and 3D printed to integrate with the commercial force sen-
sor (Figure 6(b)). This swab holder allows for the measurement of
the maximum force generated during the manually controlled NP
swab collection procedure and was tested with a phantom and pig
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291
Fig. 7. FE modeling of the swab gripper when subjected to external
forces: (a) the mesh results with the force, contacts, and the boundary
conditions shown, (b) the displacement results under 2.50N, and (c) the
force-displacement relationship with the forces applied from 0 to 2.50N.
noses (test facilities shown in Figure 9). The maximum force found
during the simulation procedure was found to be at the magnitude of
2.50N. Based on the manual experimental results, the maximum pay-
load of the robot was set to 3.00N with some additional allowances.
The maximum current setting, in real use, can be further adjusted
in an easy way once the in-vivo experiments using the manually
controlled swab holder are conducted.
2) Software Settings: The software settings for safety include
a watchdog between the microcontroller and the Blynk software which
continually monitors the connection by checking periodically refreshed
signals and various software logics to ensure that motor actuation
works in conjunction with the force sensors. The WiFi connection
between the robot and the control interface is also monitored by the
Blynk software based on its default built-in function. Communication
failures would be highlighted in the UI to inform the operator.
3) Intrinsic Features: In addition to above mentioned features, the
weight of the 2-DOF end-effector with all the electronics included
is only 0.23kg and the weight of the 6-DOF passive arm is 0.31kg.
This lightweight design intrinsically reduces the risks when using the
robot because the patient can easily move the robot away by pushing
the passive arm.
III. F INITE E LEMENT A NALYSIS OF THE S WAB G RIPPER
Finite Element (FE) models of the swab gripper and the swab were
developed in ANSYS mechanical APDL (ver. 18.2) using geometric
input of IGES file that was created by SOLIDWORKS (ver. 2018).
The model is to analyze the displacement performances of the deflec-
tion beam of the swab gripper when the swab is subjected to external
forces. To justify the design, the expected ranges and magnitudes
of the displacements should meet the selected linear range of the
optoelectronic sensor. In this study, Young’s modulus of 1.70 GPa
and Poisson’s ratio of 0.43 were used for the swab gripper based
on the information provided by the 3D printing manufacturer. Half
model was considered as the whole configuration is symmetric about
its central plane. Both parts were meshed using quadratic tetrahe-
dral elements (ANSYS element type: SOLID186). Mix u-p element
formulation method was chosen to avoid volumetric locking phe-
nomenon given that the selected material has a Poisson’s ratio of
0.43 which is close to that of an incompressible material (ν = 0.50).
The swab gripper was meshed using a total number of 32859 elements
yielding a total of 55894 nodes and the swab has 4615 elements and
10027 nodes (Figure 7(a)). Contacts between the swab and the con-
straint hole was modelled as frictionless using Augmented Lagrange
algorithm and the contact between the swab and the deflection beam
292 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL ROBOTICS AND BIONICS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2021

Fig. 8. Measurement and processed results of the force calibration

experiment.

was considered as fully bonded. The boundary conditions were added Fig. 9. Experimental setups for (a) the phantom and (b) the pig nose tests.
to constrain the movement of the gripper in Y and Z-axes. 2.50N were
applied to the distal end of the swab in seven sub steps as this was
the maximum expected force when the swab is in the nasal cavity.
The swab has a thin long shaft and is subjected to buckling under
increasing load. However, as this only happens in a limited range
and the swab is constrained by the nasal cavity, the deformations
do not cause the collapse and will continue to transfer the load.
In this study, we focused on the load analysis. An example color
coded displacement profile in the vertical direction and the com-
parison between undeformed and deformed shapes under 2.50N are
shown in Figure 7(b), as the results of the FEA. It can be observed
that the maximum displacement occurs at the center point of the
deflection beam, resulting in an approximate 0.50 mm deformation.
The force-displacement curve is shown in Figure 7(c).

IV. P RELIMINARY E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS

A. Force Calibration
Force calibration was performed using the commercial force sen-
sor. The setup is the same as the previous experiment (Figure 6(a)).
The linear stage was actuated slowly to generate the target contact
forces (from 0 to 2.50N, 0.50N interval) and the according measured
output voltages from the optoelectronic sensor were recorded. The
loading (blue line) and unloading (black line) curves are shown in
Figure 8, where the elastic hysteresis can be observed. As the cur-
rent application does not require high accuracy when measuring the
force, the average values of the measured output voltage for gener-
ating the same amounts of force during the loading and unloading
phases were used for the second order polynomial curve fitting and
the relationship (red line) between the force values, F, and the volt-
age V was: V = − 0.1184F2 + 1.4074F + 0.2588. Using the red
line as the calibration result, the error of the measured samples is
0.24 ± 0.16V (mean ± standard deviation). The calibration result
was programmed into the MCU with running average implemented
to smooth out the values from the sensor. To further analyze the per-
formances, the measured voltages were set as inputs and the predicted
forces were calculated based on the calibration results. The predicted
forces were then compared with the real generated forces and the
root-mean-square error (RMSE) was found to be 0.27N.
B. Phantom and Animal Experiments
To validate the performance of the robot and understand the
required force for the NP swab sampling procedure, a commercial
nasopharynx phantom (Simon Co., Shanghai, China) and three pig
noses (from a food supplier, no ethics required) were utilized, as
shown in Figure 9. The phantom has realistic shapes and anatomical
structures of the human nose although the silicone material’s prop-
erties are different to human tissues. The pig noses were obtained
from freshly slaughtered pigs (preserved in an ice bag and delivered
two days later). Although the anatomical structures of pig nose are
different to human nose and the pig noses were cut from the head
thereby having shorter lengths, the tissue’s mechanical properties are
likely to be close to human.
Fig. 10. Results of force measurements: (a) time versus force using the
phantom; (b) time versus force using a pig nose; (c) typical force-displacement
curves during the insertion process for the phantom and the pig nose.
In both experiments, the insertion angles of the swab were set with
the swab parallel to the palate. The phantom is stably positioned on
the bench while the pig noses required manual supports to remain
stable. The robot was actuated from the mobile app with the insertion
first and then the retraction combining with the rotation. For each test,
the insertion-retraction procedure was repeated for six times.
Upon successful completions of both the phantom and the pig nose
experiments with the initial insertion axis aligned and the required
motions completed, the measured forces versus time for the phan-
tom and an example measurement for the pig nose are shown in
Figure 10(a) and Figure 10(b). By extracting the data of the insertion-
retraction procedures, the average force was found to be 0.35± 0.58N
(mean ± standard deviation) and 0.68 ± 0.64N while the maximum
force was 2.43 and 2.61N for the phantom and pig noses, respec-
tively. The maximum identified forces were within the payload of
the robot and the detectable range of the customized sensor.
As can be seen from Figure 10, the force tends to follow a similar
trend in each iteration and reach a peak at the similar magnitude when
tested with the phantom and the pig nose. Variations between the two
tests are noted, which aroused from differences in anatomical structures
of the two test facilities and the initial insertion angles during the
two experiments. The peaks were aroused from the contacts between
the swab and the nasopharynx for the phantom and the contacts
between the swab and turbinates for the pig noses. Additionally,
typical force-displacement curves during the swab insertion process

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL ROBOTICS AND BIONICS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2021
TABLE II
I MPORTANT F EATURES OF THE P ROPOSED ROBOT
for the phantom and the pig nose are also shown in Fig. 10(c) based
on the recorded motor steps, which reflect the swab insertion depths
in the nasal cavities. The motor was actuated with constant speed
during the procedure.
C. Summary
Based on the design introduced in Section II and the preliminary
test results analyzed in Sections IV-A and IV-B, the features of the
proposed robot were summarized in Table II.
V. D ISCUSSIONS AND C ONCLUSION
This article introduces a low-cost miniature robot to assist NP sam-
pling. The robot can be made easily using 3D printing technique
together with other easy-to-find commonly used components on the
market. The robot is intended to be used in a simple way by assem-
bling different pieces together and controlling from a mobile app.
The costs for developing the robot can be further reduced if manu-
factured in large numbers (estimated to be less than 30 USD). The
payload of the robot, when controlling a swab with a long thin shaft,
is strictly limited by using small motors. Above the threshold, the
motor would slip. To guarantee the safe use, active current limiting,
watchdog with periodical response checking were implemented, in
addition to the intrinsic features of the robot.
The robot also has a detachable swab gripper which incorporates
the force sensing capability based on a simple CM and a low-
cost optoelectronic sensor. This piece can be easily assembled to
and removed from the robot, making it possible for the suspected
patient to do self-assembly and disassembly pre and post being tested.
The main detect range of 0-2.50N of the sensing gripper was jus-
tified using the FE analysis. The calibration result indicated that
the displacement range (0–0.50mm) of the deflection beam meets
the prediction of the FE model and falls into the expected linear
range of the optoelectronic sensor. The sensor’s design concept was
specifically for this low-cost application. Similar concepts of the low-
cost 3D printable force sensor using optoelectronic sensors were also
found in several related studies [10]–[12].
Using the current available resources, we have tested this robot
with a commercial nasopharynx phantom and three pig noses. The
successful working of the robot in terms of the required motions
was verified and the amounts of forces during the procedure have
been preliminarily quantified, in conjunction with the study using
a manually controlled tool with a commercial force sensor to mea-
sure the maximum forces and decide the maximum current setting
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293
of the robot. Based on the current evidence, it is concluded that the
measured forces were below the payload of the robot, within the
detectable range of the sensing gripper, and has the similar trends
and ranges when tested using different facilities.
The initial insertion angle of the robot can be set to be parallel to
the palate using the passive arm with supports from visual inspection
or IMU sensor, and this ensures the swab go into the lower nasal pas-
sages of the phantom and pig noses although both are static objects.
Considering the possible motions induced by real patients, additional
active DOFs, as replacements of the current passive joints R5 and R6
(pitch and yaw motions) can be added to the robot design to allow
further flexibility, although this will increase complexity and cost of
the robot. Therefore, the necessity for doing this would need to be
further investigated by our future in-vivo tests. The present study was
limited to experiments on simulation phantom and pig noses, although
both cannot fully represent the real nasal cavity of human. Our next
focus will be pursuing ethical approval for in-vivo tests, improving
the current force sensor design, modelling the contact between swab
tip and soft tissue, and evaluating the effectiveness and robustness of
the robot via large-scale tests.
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